The Glass Kitchen

Portia Cuthcart never intended to leave Texas. Her dream was to run the Glass Kitchen restaurant her grandmother built decades ago. But after a string of betrayals and the loss of her legacy, Portia is determined to start a new life with her sisters in Manhattan... and never cook again. But when she moves into a dilapidated brownstone on the Upper West Side, she meets 12-year-old Ariel and her widowed father Gabriel, a man with his hands full trying to raise two daughters on his own.

Looking for Me

Beth Hoffman’s bestselling debut, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt, won admirers and acclaim with its heartwarming story and cast of unforgettable characters. Now her unique flair for evocative settings and richly drawn Southern personalities shines in her compelling new novel, Looking for Me.

Emily and Einstein: A Novel of Second Chances

He was a man who didn’t deserve a second chance... but he needed one. Emily and her husband, Sandy Portman, seemed to live a gracious if busy life in an old-world, Upper West Side apartment in the famous Dakota building. But one night on the way to meet Emily, Sandy dies in a tragic accident. The funeral isn't even over before Emily learns she is on the verge of being evicted from their apartment. But worse than the possibility of losing her home, Emily is stunned when she discovers that her marriage was made up of lies.

Velva Jean Learns to Drive

Set in Appalachia in the years before World War II, Velva Jean Learns to Drive is a poignant story of a spirited young girl growing up in the gold-mining and moonshining South. Before she dies, Velva Jean's mother urges her to "live out there in the great wide world." Velva Jean dreams of becoming a big-time singer in Nashville until she falls in love with Harley Bright, a handsome juvenile delinquent turned revival preacher.

Saving Ceecee Honeycutt

Laugh-out-loud funny and deeply touching, Beth Hoffman's sparkling debut is, as Kristin Hannah says, "packed full of Southern charm, strong women, wacky humor, and good old-fashioned heart." It is a novel that explores the indomitable strengths of female friendship and gives us the story of a young girl who loses one mother and finds many others.

The Wedding Gift

When Cornelius Allen gives his daughter Clarissa’s hand in marriage, he presents her with a wedding gift: the young slave she grew up with, Sarah. Sarah is also Allen’s daughter and Clarissa’s sister, a product of his longtime relationship with his house slave, Emmeline. When Clarissa’s husband suspects that their newborn son is illegitimate, Clarissa and Sarah are sent back to her parents, Cornelius and Theodora, in shame, setting in motion a series of events that will destroy this once-powerful family.

A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty: A Novel

A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty is a powerful saga of three generations of women, plagued by hardships and torn by a devastating secret, yet inextricably joined by the bonds of family. Fifteen-year-old Mosey Slocumb-spirited, sassy, and on the cusp of womanhood-is shaken when a small grave is unearthed in the backyard, and determined to figure out why it's there. Liza, her stroke-ravaged mother, is haunted by choices she made as a teenager. But it is Jenny, Mosey's strong and big-hearted grandmother....

Dollbaby: A Novel

When Ibby Bell's father dies unexpectedly in the summer of 1964, her mother unceremoniously deposits Ibby with her eccentric grandmother Fannie and throws in her father's urn for good measure. Fannie's New Orleans house is like no place Ibby has ever been - and Fannie, who has a tendency to end up in the local asylum - is like no one she has ever met. Fortunately, Fannie's black cook, Queenie, and her smart-mouthed daughter, Dollbaby, take it upon themselves to initiate Ibby into the ways of the South both its grand traditions and its darkest secrets.

The One That Got Away: A Novel

Abbey Lahey is a married, harried working mother of two, struggling to make ends meet in a blue-collar suburb of Philadelphia. When a tumble down a Nordstrom escalator lands her in an alternate reality, Abbey finds herself happily married to the one who got away - a dashing Philly blueblood she met briefly years earlier - and living a Cinderella life of privilege and luxury.

Flight Patterns

Georgia Chambers has spent her life sifting through other people's pasts while trying to forget her own. But then her work as an expert on fine china - especially Limoges - requires her to return to the one place she swore she'd never revisit. It's been 13 years since Georgia left her family home on the coast of Florida, and nothing much has changed except that there are fewer oysters and more tourists.

The Opposite of Everyone: A Novel

A fiercely independent divorce lawyer learns the power of family and connection when she receives a cryptic message from her estranged mother in this bittersweet, witty novel from the nationally best-selling author of Someone Else's Love Story and Gods in Alabama - an emotionally resonant tale about the endurance of love and the power of stories to shape and transform our lives.

Waking Up in Dixie: A Novel

When Elizabeth Mooney escaped the shame of her "white trash" family to marry the crown prince of her small town, Howell Whittington, she never dreamed that 30 years later she'd end up trapped in a loveless marriage to the cruel banker who's foreclosing on all her friends. Then Howe has a stroke in church, and when he wakes up, he's transformed. He wants to be a real husband - which scares proper, repressed Elizabeth to death - and sets out to right past wrongs....

Gods in Alabama

When Arlene Fleet heads up north for college, she makes three promises to God: She will stop fornicating with every boy who crosses her path; never tell another lie; and never, ever go back to the "fourth rack of hell", her hometown of Possett, Alabama. All she wants from Him is one little miracle: make sure the body is never found.

Moon Over Manifest

Abilene Tucker feels abandoned. Her father has put her on a train, sending her off to live with an old friend for the summer while he works a railroad job. Armed only with a few possessions and her list of universals, Abilene jumps off the train in Manifest, Kansas, aiming to learn about the boy her father once was. Having heard stories about Manifest, Abilene is disappointed to find that it's just a dried-up, worn-out old town. But her disappointment quickly turns to excitement when she discovers a hidden cigar box full of mementos.

Between, Georgia

Nonny Frett understands the meanings of "rock" and "hard place" better than any woman ever born. She's got two mothers, "one deaf-blind and the other four baby steps from flat crazy". She's got two men: her husband, who's easing out the back door; and her best friend, who's laying siege to her heart in her front yard. She has a job that holds her in the city, and she's addicted to a little girl who's stuck deep in the country.

Spinning the Moon

In the Shadow of the Moon: When Laura Truitt first sees the dilapidated plantation house, she's overcome by a sense of familiarity. Inside, the owner claims to have been waiting for years and offers an old photograph of a woman with Laura's face. Soon afterward, when a lunar eclipse inexplicably thrusts Laura back in time to Civil War Georgia, she finds herself fighting not just for her heart but for her very survival.

The Life She Wants

In the aftermath of her financier husband's suicide, Emma Shay Compton's dream life is shattered. Richard Compton stole his clients' life savings to fund a lavish life in New York City, and, although she was never involved in the business, Emma bears the burden of her husband's crimes. She is left with nothing. Only one friend stands by her, a friend she's known since high school, who encourages her to come home to Sonoma County. But starting over isn't easy, and Sonoma is full of unhappy memories, too.

A Long Time Gone

When Vivien Walker left her home in the Mississippi Delta, she swore never to go back, as generations of the women in her family had. But in the spring, nine years to the day since she'd left, that's exactly what happens - Vivien returns, fleeing from a broken marriage and her lost dreams for children. What she hopes to find is solace with "Bootsie", her dear grandmother who raised her, a Walker woman with a knack for making everything all right. But instead she finds that her grandmother has died and that her estranged mother is drifting further away from her memories.

Someone Else's Love Story: A Novel

Someone Else's Love Story is beloved and highly acclaimed New York Times best-selling author Joshilyn Jackson's funny, charming, and poignant novel about science and miracles, secrets and truths, faith and forgiveness; about falling in love, and learning that things aren't always what they seem - or what we hope they will be.

Pretty Much Screwed

For Charlotte Crawford, the worst part about being dumped after 20 years of marriage is that her husband, Jack, doesn't want another woman; he just doesn't want her. Forty-two and clueless, Charlotte is a fish out of water in a dating pool teeming with losers. Just when she thinks she's finally put her failed marriage behind her, it comes back to bite her in the ass...hard. Without warning, Charlotte finds herself staring down the barrel of a future she wouldn't (she would totally) wish on her worst enemy.

The Weekenders

Some people stay all summer long on the idyllic island of Belle Isle, North Carolina. Some people come only for the weekends - and it's something they look forward to all week long. When Riley Griggs is waiting for her husband to arrive at the ferry one Friday afternoon, she is instead served with papers informing her that her island home is being foreclosed. To make matters worse, her husband is nowhere to be found.

Reflection

Twenty years ago, a terrible tragedy shattered the tranquility of the small Pennsylvania Dutch town of Reflection. The residents of the village have never forgiven the one woman they blamed for what happened - Rachel Huber. After the incident, Rachel left the town and cut off all ties there. But when Rachel receives the news that her estranged grandmother, Helen, is ill and needs her care, she returns to Reflection.

The Sound of Glass

It has been two years since the death of Merritt Heyward's husband, Cal, when she receives unexpected news - Cal's family home in Beaufort, South Carolina, bequeathed by Cal's reclusive grandmother, now belongs to Merritt. Charting the course of an uncertain life - and feeling guilt from her husband's tragic death - Merritt travels from her home in Maine to Beaufort, where the secrets of Cal's unspoken-of past reside among the pluff mud and jasmine of the ancestral Heyward home on the Bluff.

Queen Bee of Mimosa Branch

Southern housewife Linwood Breedlove Scott was happily content in her comfortable 30-year marriage, but when her husband cleans out their bank accounts and runs off with a stripper, her life takes a hilarious, yet touching, right turn into reality. With no place to go but home, she's forced back to her eccentric family she escaped by marrying at 19. But despite her newly dependent situation, Lin begins to stand on her own two feet and wake up to the joys - and perils - of life as a single woman.

Publisher's Summary

The Junior League of Willow Creek, Texas, is très exclusive. Undesirables need not apply. Fredericka Mercedes Hildebrand Ware (Frede to her friends) is a member beyond reproach...until her life begins to unravel. When her husband betrays her, steals her money, and runs off to places unknown, it's something Frede would prefer to keep under wraps. The last thing she needs is to become fodder for the JLWC gossip mill. And to make matters worse, there's only one person in town who stands a chance at helping her get revenge - Howard Grout, a tasteless, gold-chain-wearing lawyer who has bought his way into Frede's tony neighborhood. But there's a price: She has to get his tacky, four-inch-stiletto-and-pink-spandex-wearing wife, Nikki, into the Junior League.

The crème de la crème of Southern royalty should sit up and take notice, and hang on tight for this irresistible tale of getting in and getting even.

This is a great book. My husband is a non-fiction reader and hates chick lit, but he listened to this with me on a recent trip and he also enjoyed it. He laughed out loud quite a bit. This really is a good story. The book is written in the first person and the main character (the heroine) uses a lot of lists (First, second, etc) to present ideas or aspects of the story line. I thought the use of lists was very clever. The main character really grows on you. She is very proud of herself but it is not a turn off - it is really hilarious.

I added this to my "to read" list when this first came out and I saw what a fit the Junior Leagues of American were throwing about its contents. Never having been in a Junior League in Texas but with friends that were, I was curious. This was fun, easy, "escape" reading. I actually started it twice because when I first began, it just seemed too lightweight for me to care. The obviously not-from-Texas accent was initially very distracting for me since I am a Texan and NO ONE native to this state speaks this way. The narrator has a consistent southern accent and does a wonderful job with the different voices and once I got past her lack of a Texas accent, I enjoyed her reading. No one choosing this is expecting deep, meaningful literature, but for those looking for a light, distracting summer read, this fits the bill.

I downloaded this book from the half price sale not sure if I would like it but decided to give it a try. I am so glad I did. This piece of non fiction is a delightful read as the protagonist, Frede Ware turns from snob to sort of snob. An upstanding member of Willow Creek, near-president of the Junior League, practically untouchable Frede watches her perfect unravel before her eyes. Not believing that the "Fabulous Frede Ware" could have such things happen to her, she begins to touch the "NC" (no class) side of life and in doing so, experiences personal growth. But don't let that story line scare you. Linda Francis Lee writes this light hearted comedy in such an engaging way that you can't help but smile all the way through. I was disappointed that the book was over and immediately went back to Audible to see if she had anything else I could download. Jenna Lamia is an excellent narrator and does the southern bell accent perfectly, getting just the right tone of someone with money and someone without it. I fell in love with the book almost instantly. I highly recommend the book.

A great listen. The book is an engaging story -- with a heroine you love to hate a little at the beginning, but grow to love whole-heartedly by the end. The narrator really brought the story to life, and did an amazing set of accents. I also felt like I got an anthropological look at a whole different culture I wish I could go and visit.

As a girl from the South who grew up with all of the "rules", I could totally relate to the character. Although it was a little over the top, I found this book great fun. The narrator is the best. She also narrated The Secret Life of Bees and The Help - two of my all-time favorite audible books. I may just start choosing books she narrates. I could have lived without the romance part but it was minimal and didn't detract from the book. For a fun, summer book, this is it!

Jenna Lamia brings this modern southern tale to life. If you're looking for a deep, thought-provoking story, this isn't the one for you. But if you want a fun and funny tale of personal growth, this is it. Enjoyable.

Light hearted and funny. This is a parody of certain women we all love to hate. If you want something easy to listen to and even easier to laugh to, this is for you. Wish we had more of the hilarious books by Linda Francis Lee on Audible.

This is a little light "reading", but the narration is excellent. Jenna Lamia also narrated "The Secret Life of Bees", which led me to this book. She does such an excellent job with the southern accent, that it makes me slip back into my own-even though I have not lived in the South now for over 30 years. I also discovered, accidentally, that she is one of the narrators in "The Help", which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Loved it. Loved it Loved it. Loved it so much I looked for another book from this author only to be disappointed as this is the only one she has on Audible. (Don't know if she has written any others). Jenna Lamia reads it in a tone that just has that Junior League feel about it! A fun collaboration!

This is a very funny, fast-paced book about a Texas socialite who loses her husband and money but finds herself. Though it's not the deepest book, it's very entertaining. The narrator does a fantastic job. She makes every character unique and has terrific comic timing.